Introducing the Novel The Spinoza Problem

It seems that after the publication of the book When Nietzsche Wept, those readers who desire both spiritual literature and are enamored with stories and novels have found this American author to their liking and follow his works. Yalom wrote this novel about someone whose life was entirely an intellectual struggle, and about whom, of course, not much detailed information is available. Many—including Irvin Yalom—believe that Spinoza changed the world with his writings. He accelerated the course of secularism, the political school of liberal democracy, and the dawn of the natural sciences, paving the way for the Age of Enlightenment. His works were excommunicated by the Jews when he was 24, and then censored by Christians for the rest of his life. Irvin Yalom, who considers Spinoza one of his iconoclastic heroes, has used his life and thoughts as material and written a philosophical-psychological novel. His two previous works, which also won the favor of Iranian audiences, were about Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The theme of Yalom's novels is a blend of life, philosophy, and psychology, which has created a transformation in the science of psychiatry. The Spinoza Problem, translated by Hossein Kazemi Yazdi, has been published in 460 pages by Sobh-e Sadegh Publications.

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Excerpts from the book The Spinoza Problem:

- Whenever you reach a goal, that very goal creates other needs. Therefore, the more you run, the more you search, and this process continues ad infinitum. There must be a true path toward eternal happiness somewhere.

- Superstition and reason never go together.

- Let your love take wing, and do not let it be affected by the idea that your love must be requited.

- The closest bonds arise from differences.

- What matters is not what you believe or say you believe; what matters is the way you live.

- False ideas bring false and weak comfort.

- Thinking, real thinking, is hard work, like carrying heavy boxes to the attic.

- Are you not ashamed of your eagerness to acquire as much wealth, fame, and honor as possible, while you care nothing for knowledge, truth, and the best state of your soul? (Plato's Apology)

- To achieve fame, one must love what others love and avoid what others avoid. A life lived for fame is a life lived by politics.

- The fear of death is the source of many pains.

- Peace cannot sprout in the soil of hypocrisy.

- Every day I believe more that if we want to live among people with different beliefs, we cannot get along with them without making fundamental changes in ourselves.

- Even if you search the whole world, you will not find a society without superstition. As long as there is ignorance, there will be advocacy for superstition.

- When wisdom enters your heart and your soul benefits from knowledge, then you will understand benevolence, justice, righteousness, and every other good path.

- Religious powers, in every spectrum, want to prevent the expansion of rational talents.

- Blind obedience, without questioning, is a disease.

- Fear breeds superstition.

- If proving the errors in the sacred texts is blasphemy, then what should we call those who have inserted their own carnal desires into these texts, those who have degraded the dignity of the sacred authors and made their writings appear as incoherent nonsense?

- Psychology is a strange field. Unlike other fields of medicine, psychology has no end. Your greatest tool is yourself; and working on self-knowledge is endless.

- I desire the end of every tradition that interferes with the right of individuals to think for themselves.

- We should respect things for their correctness, not because of their antiquity.

- If you want to grow, you must master your emotions by binding your feelings to something immutable and eternal.

- Only a strong emotion can overcome another emotion.

- Loving something eternal and infinite brings complete joy to the mind, a joy that is not in itself mixed with sadness; this is why one should desire it and pursue it with all one's strength.

- The most important thing in life is perfecting the intellect or understanding... the highest human happiness lies in this matter; indeed, blessedness is nothing but the contentment of the spirit, a spirit that arises from the intuitive knowledge of God.

- There are some emotions that deserve a status equal to reason.

- The human of two thousand years ago needed something that the human of today does not need. ... The reason for the existence of superstition in all these cultures was that ancient humans were terrified by the mysterious capriciousness of existence. He lacked the knowledge to offer him anything, the knowledge he needed more than all these explanations. And in that ancient time, only one form of justification was available to man: superstition; through prayer, sacrifice, kosher laws, and...

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